Miles City: Bust and Recovery, 1925-1960

Posted on December 30, 2014 by carrollvanwest

The thirty years between 1925 and 1955 were among the worst of times for residents of Miles City, but these were years where the town created and gained new institutions that would serve them well for the rest of the century. Population growth stalled, then sharply declined. 1930 census counted 7,175, a drop of over 750 from 1920. And the number only ticked up slightly during the 1930s, gaining less than 150 new residents.

In the late 1920s, stockgrowers worked with local boosters to establish the Eastern Montana Fairgrounds, and over the next twenty years, they added new buildings and features to transform the place into a historic district that showcases what fairgrounds mean to rural Montana communities. Stockgrowers also met with local railroad officials to devise a plan to reinvigorate the grazing lands south of Miles City, properties that had been overgrazed since there were no restrictions on grazing on public lands. The group established a concept that called for formal leasing of public lands for grazing in return for private investment and better conservation practices. Congress agreed that the concept was worth an experiment and in 1928 it established by law the Mizpah-Pumpkin Creek Grazing District. As Depression stalked the land in the early 1930s, Congress took the Custer County experiment and transformed it into a national law that impacted the entire West: the Taylor Grazing Act.

The Taylor Grazing Act combined with other New Deal agricultural programs to call for the slaughter of thousands of cattle and horses in the region. That, combined with the end of the open range, devastated the cowboy culture that had so defined Custer County and left everyone in a funk.

At least one bright spot lit up Main Street. In 1936 the Montana Theatre, a splendid Art Deco building, opened, and the movies provided one important escape from the hard times.

Postcard of Range Riders Museum c. 1960

Another local reaction came in 1939 when residents met and celebrated the cowboys who came in the early years of settlement and created the culture that everyone hated to see pass. A year later they gathered in Miles City again and decided to raise money for a “cowboy’s memorial building,” which when completed in 1942 became the Range Riders Museum. As a history of the museum concludes, the building “serves two other principal purposes: A meeting place for cowboys and a headquarters for the annual reunion. The members were satisfied that it was a fitting memorial to an industry in which the raising and furnishing of livestock needed to be preserved for future generations.”

Range Riders Museum, 2013

The museum has steadily expanded ever since, with the addition of new exhibition space and adding other historic buildings from the county to the property.

Another community institution, Riverside Park, received a new ballpark, fearing beautiful stone masonry, known now as Connors Stadium, in 1940. This New Deal project was just one of many across Montana in the late 1930s and 1940s, designed to improve public recreation and school athletics.

New Deal support also combined with local funding to create the Pumping Station Park at the nearby city waterworks plant. Custer County now had re-energized public spaces.

Northeast of Miles City, and north of the Yellowstone River, federal agencies created a huge reformed landscape, the Kinsey Flats project (1938-1941), which was a double-layered landscape of the New Deal. Here, federal Resettlement Administration officials relocated formerly displaced ranchers—many of whom the New Deal had dislocated earlier in the decade during its massive purchase of marginal lands throughout the region—to a new planned community north of Miles City. One of the officials involved with both projects, David G. Rivenes of Miles City, recalled: “I know what a terrible experience it was for folks from Fallon County, East Custer County, and Prairie County, to pull up stakes, leave their life-long friends and relatives, the land that some had even homesteaded—and move into strange surroundings and convert to irrigation farming.”

Federal funding also bettered educational opportunities. The National Youth Administration supported not only the high school but also expanding its offerings to create the Custer County Junior College. During World War II, federal funding supported civil pilot training at the college, which at that time held its classes at the high school. In 1957, it moved classes to the historic Milwaukee Road depot.

Milwaukee Road Depot, Miles City

In 1966 the college changed its name to Miles Community College and began the process of relocating to its present campus, near the VA hospital complex. The first junior college in the region continues to shape Miles City today.

Miles Community College, c. 1967

These different public institutions played a crucial role in Miles City’s decade of recovery from 1945 to 1960 as population grew to 9243 in 1950 and almost 10,000 by 1960. Federal funding was important but local support was critical. County government, for example, added a Art Deco Modern courthouse, designed by the firm of J.G. Link of Billings, in 1948-1949.

Then residents and local governments pooled resources to donate almost $30,00 to purchase prime east side property to attract the construction of a modern Veterans Administration hospital. Groundbreaking took place in October 1948 and the hospital admitted its first patients on August 1, 1951.

The architect was Great Falls native, Angus V. McIver, working in collaboration with Cushing and Terrell of Billings. McIver had been a prominent architect in Great Falls and Billings for a generation, along with a distinguished career with the military and other federal agencies. Shortly after receiving this commission, McIver was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects.

As contractors were building the 100-bed hospital, local ranchers and civic leaders launched, in 1950, the annual Miles City Bucking Horse Sale, one of the premier cultural events in eastern Montana every May. The sale uses both the Eastern Montana Fairgrounds, the Range Riders Museum, and Riverside Park–among other venues–to pay homage to the city’s cowboy roots but also the persistence of stockraising in this region.

Miles City’s Boom, 1907-1925

Posted on December 30, 2014 by carrollvanwest

The Renaissance Revival-styled U.S. Post Office, designed by Oscar Wenderoth, opened in 1916 during the height of the region’s homesteading boom.

Following the construction of the Milwaukee Road and its various shops, roundhouse, and offices, Miles City entered a boom period unlike any other in the town’s history. The boom lasted for just under 20 years, ending soon after the Northern Pacific Railroad constructed its new passenger depot in 1924. In between the arrival of the Milwaukee, and the opening of the new Northern Pacific depot, an array of new middle-class homes, churches, new public elementary and high schools, and businesses gave the city its early twentieth century “look” still prized today and protected by three historic districts.

Washington School, Miles City

Census records tell us a mere 1,938 people lived in Miles City in 1900, but by 1910 that number had jumped to 4,697 and ten years later, 1920, almost 8,000 people lived there. Hemmed in by the Yellowstone River and the mainline of the Northern Pacific, the town spread to the east, along Main Street, and then north into the new neighborhoods associated with the Milwaukee Road developments.

The East Main Historic District has a number of architecturally distinctive buildings from the 1910. The Horton House (1911) is an excellent example of the “American Four-Square” house designed by Miles City architect Brynjulf Rivenes. The two-story house is now a bed and breakfast business. You don’t typically equate eastern Montana towns with the latest in domestic architecture styles, but the Love House (1916) is an excellent Montana example of the Prairie style, first created by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright and here executed in a design from George Wageley. Another example of the Prairie style from that same decade is the Pope House, built by Thomas Horton.

Horton House Bed and Breakfast, Miles City

Love House, Miles City

Pope House, Miles City

Just off of East Main Street is the Wibaux Park neighborhood, centered around a public space donated by cattleman Pierre Wibaux in 1915. Here the dwellings included bungalows, Colonial Revival cottages, and an impressive example of Tudor Revival style.

Wibaux Park, Miles City

Tudor Revival style house facing Wibaux Park, Miles City.

Congregations also built large, architecturally distinctive church buildings to serve their growing congregations. The Methodists added a Gothic Revival style building, designed by Woodruff and McGulpin, in 1912. The Presbyterians added their own Gothic edifice two years later, a mammoth building designed by Brynjulf Rivenes that stood between the downtown commercial district and the new residential areas. The Catholics added a new Sacred Heart church in 1924, adding to the contributions started by the Ursulines at the first of the century.

Methodist Church, Miles City

First Presbyterian, entrance, Miles City

Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Miles City

New public schools–with the buildings still in use today–completed the process of urban growth between 1907 and 1925. The Custer County High School, finished in 1922, became a centerpiece not only of Miles City but the the county as a whole. Here was a modern facility that gave local students opportunities their parents never had. The boom had been magnificent but as drought and homesteading failures multiplified across eastern Montana by the mid-1920s, residents were learning that the bust would be transformative too. We will look at the era of bust and recovery next.

Custer County High School, 1922

Miles City as a Two-Railroad Town

Posted on December 29, 2014 by carrollvanwest

Northern Pacific Railway depot, c. 1924, Miles City. It has been listed in the National Register but it needs a preservation hero.

Miles City has a distinct look and feel due to how historic transportation links have impacted the town. First, certainly, was the Yellowstone River and Tongue River: as discussed in previous posts the military positioned itself here in 1876 because it is where the Tongue River met the Yellowstone. By the end of that decade a rough wagon road connected this place to other early towns along the Yellowstone. Then in 1881-1882 came the tracks of the Northern Pacific Railroad. Soon Main Street boasted new two and three-story brick buildings to signify its arrival as a key transportation crossroads for the northern plains cattle industry.

Historic stockyards remain a prominent landmark on the west side of Miles City.

The early arrival and commercial dominance of the Northern Pacific left a lasting mark on Miles City. Main Street, which is listed as a National Register historic district, was the town’s primary commercial artery until the late 20th century. But so much of the historic built environment you find in Miles City today is due, in large part, to the impact of the arrival of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Pacific Railroad–better known as the Milwaukee Road–in 1907.

Milwaukee Road Depot, Miles City

The Milwaukee Road was the last transcontinental to stretch across Montana. It came into eastern Montana at Baker and angled sharply to the northwest, heading to the Yellowstone Valley, sharing the valley landscape with the dominant Northern Pacific, and typically building its tracks north of those of the Northern Pacific between Terry and Forsyth, where the Milwaukee left the Yellowstone and headed into central Montana.

Milwaukee Road corridor in Miles City

The Milwaukee made Miles City its primary division point for eastern Montana, locating offices, machine shops, and a roundhouse in an entirely new section of the town, northeast of Main Street. Several of the historic buildings associated with the Milwaukee remain, although there have been many lost buildings in the last 30 years. One remnant, quite unkempt in 2013 but still in use, was the Milwaukee Park,

Remnants of the Milwaukee Road works, Miles City, 2013

a parcel of land located between the railroad shops and adjacent working-class neighborhoods. The park is now a recreation area and playground and provides one of the best ways to look at these historic railroad buildings today.

The Milwaukee Road combined with the homesteading boom of the 1910s to spur new construction and investment as nothing else had, either before or since. Some of the new landmarks were unassuming, such as the Wool Warehouse, built just west of the depot, and now converted into a successful Arts and Antiques business.

Many others were much more purposeful statements of growth, and the promise of prosperity. The 1914 City Hall, which is listed in the National Register, gave Miles City not only modern civic space but made an architectural statement that the town was no longer just a cow-puncher’s place.

Downtown received new buildings, and an architectural upgrade, with such imposing edifices as the Professional Building (c. 1910) and the Masonic Temple.

The arrival of the Milwaukee Road, and the thousands of homesteaders in the following decade, charted a new course for Miles City, evident in the new facades of Main Street but perhaps best shown in the new neighborhoods, churches, and schools that redefined the city in the 1910s and into the 1920s. Those places will be our next post.

Miles City’s first steps in preservation, 1984

Posted on December 28, 2014 by carrollvanwest

When I next returned to Miles City in March 1984, I found a town much interested in the promise of historic preservation. At that time, the town and Custer County as a whole only had three properties listed in the National Register of Historic Places: Fort Keogh, a steam laundry building (since demolished), and the city waterworks along the Yellowstone river.

Miles City Water Treatment Plant, c. 1911

This local landmark, which had been converted into the Custer County Arts and Heritage Center, came out of Miles City’s golden decade of the 1910s when the town boomed following the arrival of the Milwaukee Road, the railroad’s decision to turn the town into a division point, and the potential of new business brought about by the arrival of thousands of homesteaders either on the Milwaukee line or the earlier Northern Pacific Railroad, which had done so much to establish and develop the town from 1882 forward.

The Pumping Station park at the waterworks dates to 1939, another public project of the New Deal which did so much to transform the town and county.

The public meeting for the preservation plan took place at the waterworks, organized by the director of the Custer County Arts and Heritage Center (now known as Waterworks Art Museum). It was a lively and interested crowd, like me concerned about the fate of Fort Keogh and its rapidly disappearing historic buildings and what still remained in town of its railroad era of 1882 to 1932.

The fort property had been accidentally preserved for decades, ever since its conversion into an agricultural experiment station in the 1920s. But preserving what had been left was not a priority of the agricultural reformers (who, to be fair, were never awash in funding).

The tall metal flag pole marks the old parade grounds at Fort Keogh.

In 1984, one officer quarters still remained on the property, in poor repair. It has been moved a few miles down the highway and restored at the Range Riders Museum.

Photo taken from Range Riders Museum website

One historic c. 1920 mess hall, from the fort’s remount era, also remains, and is the post’s most noticeable landmark. But one brick water wagon shed from 1883 still exists (it was converted into a truck garage in the 1930s) as well as another New Deal building, a massive horse barn from 1934.

The mess hall, c. 1920, at Fort Keogh

The group that night at the waterworks emphasized that they knew more needed to be done, and over the next generation, town residents have done impressive work, especially considering that the town’s population has been in decline, from about 9600 in 1980 to 8400 in 2010. The arts center no doubt showed significant leadership: how a historic building could be converted into new community uses. But one ringleader also introduced himself to me that evening–Dave Rivenes. Dave and Ella Rivenes were community institutions as owners/operators of the local television station, representing the smallest television market in the entire United States.

As soon as the meeting was over, Dave convinced me to come to his house, and go on the air, discussing for the local audience what had happened that night. He and Ella then put me on the morning show. Not having any experience before with live television, I hope that I sounded somewhat with it–it was a surreal experience. But the pride in the town and the appreciation for the past that I gained from Dave and Ella Rivenes left a lasting mark. I came to understand that when residents embrace their past, and you help them in that quest, good things for history and preservation can happen. That is apparent in what Miles City has accomplished in historic preservation over the last 30 years–the subject of my next several posts.

Miles City: The Yellowstone’s Forgotten Jewel

Posted on December 27, 2014 by carrollvanwest

When I first visited Miles City more than 30 years ago I came to find out more about this first white settlement place in the Yellowstone Valley, where the U.S. Army established its Tongue River Cantonment in 1876 and then, after the battles at Rosebud and the Little Bighorn that same year, it established Fort Keogh, named in honor of Myles Keogh, one of the soldiers who died at Little Bighorn. I had a small travel grant from the American Association of state and Local History to support this research–the beginnings of the eventual Capitalism on the Frontier book of 1993, so I spent time in the local library–part of which was a classical-styled Carnegie Library, with a rather garish yet functional extension from the 1970s covering up the original building’s facade.

I spent time that evening at another landmark, the Montana Bar, part of an early 1900s building that is now on the National Register of Historic Places. The bar was not only full of friendly, helpful types. It also had one of the most amazing intact tavern interiors I had yet encountered in Montana.

Here, in these dark-stained wood booths, the decorative pressed tin ceiling, the magnificent back bar, and all of the stuffed animal heads seemed to be the real West that was being forgotten and covered over in the more urban, more populated western half of Montana where I lived.

Miles City especially seemed a throw-back when, across the street, was the biggest, most splashy bar sign I had yet seen in Montana: that of the Ranger Rider Bar.

That evening I never considered meander through the streets out to the chain motels out by the interstate highway. I just walked across the street to the Olive Hotel, a historic downtown hotel from the railroad era; the build just stood a few blocks away from the Northern Pacific Railroad depot and faced Main Street, what was for many decades u.S. Highway 10, the primary east-west link in Montana.

For many visitors no doubt, a day and night in Miles City would be more than enough–that was certainly the reaction back in Helena. But that early 1983 visit would be just one of many over the years since as I have carefully explored the city’s many layers, ones far deeper and more significant than the real West image the town still carries proudly. Next comes my real introduction to Miles City during the preservation plan travel of 1984, and my meeting with the Rivenes family.

Ekalaka: Montana’s Southeast Corner

Posted on December 26, 2014 by carrollvanwest

Traveling south along Montana-Dakota border on Montana Highway 7, Ekalaka appears as an oasis of settlement, as it lies almost hidden away along Russell Creek. The seat of Carter County, the town is perhaps best known for the Carter County Museum, a solid institution of natural and local history. Since I had last visited 25 years earlier the museum facility had grown substantially–while the town had slipped to just over 300 residents, according to the 2010 census.

The museum is best known for its dinosaur collections but it also has rich local history collections, and features one of the county’s homesteading era schools moved to the grounds. Central School operated from 1920 to 1947.

So much of what you find in Ekalaka dates to that same time period. The state established Carter County in 1917 and three years later the present-day Carter County Courthouse was opened for business. Wwhen I visited in 2013 this three-story frame building with a Colonial Revival-styled cupola was undergoing renovation. It stands at the heart of the

town, creating a large public space that is shared by the county’s two demographic extremes, represented by the elementary school and a more recent county nursing home.

The physical fabric of Ekalaka’s main street was much the same as it had been in 1984, but now there were more shuttered buildings. Community landmarks included the combination town library and Masonic Lodge building from the first half of the 20th century and the new post office from the first decade of the 21st century.

Deb’s Coffee Shop, the Guest House, and the Mainstreet grocery are still-going concerns while the most obvious commercial landmark–the old Eagles Lodge building–is home to the Ekalaka Eagle, one of the oldest small-town newspapers in the state, almost as old as the town itself.

Carter County in 2013 did not have a property listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and the Eagle Building appears to meet the register criteria, but you could also consider the whole commercial area as a historic district for how it still reflects a rural county seat of the 20th century.

Other historic properties abound in Carter County, from the Medicine Rocks north of Ekalaka to Camp Needmore–an old Civilian Conservation Corps camp–south of town in the Custer National Forest. More on those landmarks in later posts. I am still not finished exploring Montana’s southeastern corner.

Down the Powder River to Broadus

Posted on December 23, 2014 by carrollvanwest

When I was able to carve some extra fieldwork in my limited time in Montana in 2013, there were two places in particular I was eager to revisit, both in the state’s far southeast corner. Broadus, the seat of Powder River County, and Ekalaka, the seat of Carter County, were tiny places in 1984. Yet both made me very more than welcome in my work for the state historic preservation plan.

My 1984 public meeting on the historic preservation plan took place at what was then the new Powder River County Courthouse, a real point of pride, obviously, for all of the residents. Built in 1978 from designs by Harrison G. Fagg and Associates, the building is 1970s modernism at its best: low profile, earth-tone brick, at one with its setting but also with a functional modern interior where all of the work of county government could take place. That night, the residents’ passion and interest in the past were intense. They couldn’t wait, they said, to show me the oldest homestead house in the county, from 1916. I have recounted that story many times since: it all depends on the context when you think of how “old” a property may be. In the Powder River County context, it made sense: the county itself wasn’t formed until 1919.

Another property I visited in 1984 following the public meeting was the Cross Ranch, and took the photo above of its overall setting. At that time the county had no properties listed in the National Register: the Cross Ranch Headquarters, with its distinctive hipped roof, would be the first, in 1996.

Broadus itself has several properties that are also National Register worthy. Although the population decline has been steep, from 712 in 1980 to merely 468 in 2010, I found its distinctive town square plan intact. Town squares are common in the south and midwest but not so much in Montana since so many county seats are either mining towns, that grew quickly and haphazardly, or railroad towns with their familiar symmetrical plan or T-plan design. My favorite landmark is the historic Montana Bar and Cafe, which is now the Montana Casino and Bar–the wild game collection is still there but like most historic bars across the state the pings of gambling machines now dominate the interiors as bar owners do what they can for income as rural populations continue to decrease.

For a place under 500 people, in a county of just over 1100 residents, Broadus provides a range of outlets for recreation and entertainment besides the public school, from the county museum for visitors, the local library, a bowling alley, and a small movie theater.

The most important, and historic, community institution–again in addition to the public schools–is Cottonwood Park, where the annual Powder River County Rodeo takes place.

The Let ‘Er Buck Rodeo is one of the region’s best, and makes the town come alive every summer. Fairgrounds are so important in the rural west: community gatherings matter to those who are scattered across this vast landscape.

North of Broadus on Montana Highway 59 is another landmark of community, but one quite rare to find in today’s west. The Coalwood Ladies Aid Society was established in 1915; it still meets in the historic Coalwood School, c. 1945. Women’s organizations like the Coalwood Ladies Aid served not only as a support group but also community builders for rural places across the region.

Broadus was, and is, a place where the past matters and residents still embrace their way of life and special place in the Montana landscape.

Crossroads of history: where the Yellowstone and Powder rivers meet

Posted on December 22, 2014 by carrollvanwest

The confluence of the Yellowstone and Powder rivers in Prairie County, Montana, is among the most important places of the American West. Thirty years ago, in my work for the Montana state historic preservation plan, I went to that spot, easily viewed from old U.S. Highway 10, and found only a couple of lonely graves–marked by the county historical society–of buffalo hunters who had ranged this land in the late 1870s. That night, at my public meeting at the Prairie County Museum in Terry, I brought up that place to the folks gathered there, chiding gently, I thought, that there should be some highway markers to direct visitors to that spot, that it was very important and quite a compelling view of the landscape itself. What happened next was a laconic comment that I have told on myself ever since: one community member just replied: “Son, we know where they are.” Of course–I have never forgotten that lesson–locals do know where their history took place; markers are necessary, not for them, but for us, the outsiders, the visitors.

Fast forward 30 years, and the confluence is no longer neglected–now it is one of the best interpreted landscapes in eastern Montana. The Prairie County Grazing District worked with the Montana Department of Transportation and other partners to create a graveled pull-off from the old highway, and then installed not only an appropriate fence around the graves, but also several interpretive signs that tell the multi-layered history of the site.

The story here is big, and the markers do a solid job of capturing it, from the early Native American history to the coming of Captain William Clark during the Lewis and Clark expedition, the later fur trading era of the mid-19th century, and then the marks you can still see on the landscape made first by the Northern Pacific Railroad in the early 1880s and from the federal highway era of the early 20th century. It gives particular focus to the Sioux War of the 1870s and how this spot served as a base–known as the Powder River Depot–for 1876-1877 military actions by Terry, Crook, Custer, and others. A good way to access the river is by the Powder River Depot Fishing Access site.

Nearby, back on the highway, is a key transportation landmark, the Northern Pacific Railroad bridge over the Powder River–it was the railroad that introduced a new era of settlement and development into this region. And I will return to the theme of the railroad and its significance as we continue westward to Miles City.

Howdy from Terry!

Posted on December 6, 2014 by carrollvanwest

Terry, the seat of Prairie County, has long been one of my favorite places in the Yellowstone Valley. Stuck between the much larger, and more famed, Yellowstone towns of Miles City (to the west) and Glendive (to the east), Terry has somehow developed and kept its own identity as a western place, and landscape, that still speaks strongly to the patterns that transformed the region over the last 150 years: railroads, homesteading, cattle, and town building.

In 1984 I focused on the railroad imprint on the town, which began in the early 1880s as Northern Pacific officials understood the need for a railroad stop at place near the confluence between the Yellowstone and Powder rivers.

In 2013, however, the depot was gone from the tracks but not the town. It had been moved to become part of the solid Prairie County Museum, a local institution that was still quite new when I first visited in 1984. Located in the town’s most prominent neoclassical bank building from the 1910s, the museum was a place where I held a public meeting about the preservation plan process and found a community totally engaged with its past.

The museum highlights agriculture and ranching, and includes the Evelyn Cameron Gallery, which displays and celebrates the life and contributions of this important western photographer. One change I noted last year was the creation of the Evelyn Cameron Heritage Center, on Laudre Avenue just a few yards away from the museum, which is at the crossroads of Laudre and Logan Avenues.

That crossroads was another pattern in Terry’s landscape that caught my eye. Most Northern Pacific towns, originally, were symmetrical plans, with a long line of commercial buildings flanking one side of the tracks and grain elevators and warehouses on the other side. Terry, however, had a classic T-town plan, with the tracks creating the top of the T and then a main commercial artery, in this case Logan Avenue, serving as the stem of the “T.”

Why was Terry different? It is the impact of the Milwaukee Road as it built through the valley in 1906-1907. In 1984 there was still a second set of tracks, and a few scattered commercial buildings, to the north of the Northern Pacific mainline. Today two buildings remain along with the roadbed that marks this second period of Terry’s growth.

Just west of the “downtown” you can find the one still thriving institution associated with the Milwaukee Road impact on Terry: the Prairie County Fairgrounds, which once faced the Milwaukee’s main line. (I have discussed the fairgrounds in an earlier post.)

Another wave of change came to Terry in the 1920s as U.S. Highway 10 gave the town another transportation pattern. The highway’s crossroads with the original T-plan commercial artery is marked by a still extant somewhat Art Deco-styled brick gas station/ auto dealership.

The most recognized roadside landmark is the Kempton Hotel, a true rarity now for this section of the Yellowstone Valley as those rambling montage of buildings that once constituted places of rest and relaxation along the nation’s highways have largely disappeared from the landscape.
Then, just yards away, is another rambling montage of historic buildings, the schools of Prairie County, ranging from the large stately multi-story brick buildings of the early 20th century to more restrained modern buildings of the second half of the century.

At the edge of town are three different properties, all related to the need for highway transportation. The Dizzy Diner is a classic 1950s drive-in while the crumbling Terry drive-in also speaks to past patterns in popular culture. Then the Prairie County Grazing District Stockyards connects the present to the past traditions of stock raising in this region.

Certainly the biggest change is Terry from 1984 and 2013 was the transformation of the county courthouse. In 1984 I was shocked that there was only an unadorned concrete block building for the courthouse, and I have shared images of that building across the country. Well the concrete block building on Logan Avenue is gone, replaced by a much larger, still unadorned building for local government.

Terry’s population has dropped by a third since my first encounter with the town in the early 1980s. But new public investment, and a still commercially relevant “downtown” speaks volumes to the residents’ commitment and faith in this small yet significant Yellowstone valley town.

The Yellowstone’s Prairie County

Posted on December 6, 2014 by carrollvanwest

Old U.S. 10 bridge over Yellowstone River, Prairie County, MT

From Glendive in 1984, I began to move up the Yellowstone Valley, taking a particular interest in the various Northern Pacific railroad towns–that over-arching pattern in the region’s historic landscape was clearly my over-riding interest in 1984. But places like Prairie County added their own intriguing challenges. Here the Milwaukee Road, coming from the southeast, entered into the valley. And then there was the real treasure trove of early settlement photographs produced by Evelyn Cameron. Thirty years ago, Cameron’s stark yet compelling images were just become re-discovered and appreciated. Her images were also in my head as I traveled this small eastern Montana county.

Fallon was the first town I encountered in Prairie County. Established during the building of the Northern Pacific in the early 1880s, it has never been a big place. Its National Register landmark is probably rarely recognized, since it is the steel truss bridge on old U.S. 10 that crosses the Yellowstone at this place. This magnificent continuous span Warren through truss bridge is Montana’s longest truss bridge, 1,142 feet. It was built in 1944 as a wartime emergency project after a ice flow destroyed an earlier crossing at this place. It is also a reminder of how crucial old U.S. 10 was to the nation’s transportation system in the mid-20th century.

When I visited Fallon 30 years ago, the school was a focal point of the community. In 2013, it was closed, and counted as one of the National Trust for Historic Places threatened rural schools of Montana.

The old bank building was the post office, a great adaptive reuse I thought in 1984. This neoclassical brick building is still the post office–having survived the earlier postal service to close many small town Montana post offices.

Another really important place of continuity was the Lazy Jo’s bar and cafe. Housed in one of those typical Eastern Montana buildings that grew, morphed, and changed again over the last 100+ years, it is still a great place, and an active community center.

Across from the bar, between the town’s main street and the railroad tracks, was the water trough, a reminder of those days amply recorded in Cameron’s photographs 100 years ago, and the town’s only marked historic structure.

Community pride is probably expressed best through the tiny but still active Fallon Town Park and the quietly dignified Grace Lutheran Church. These are anchors for a place that has experienced and survived much and faces an uncertain 21st century future.

I apologize for the gaps in recent posts, just extremely busy in the job that actually pays money–hopefully I can catch up in what goes for winter in Tennessee. Next is Terry, Montana.

	phoebedelucco on Butte modernism
	Lana Seagren on Miles City’s Boom, …
	Edward Lynch on Terrible News: the Burning of…
	Scott Allen Tice on Terrible News: the Burning of…
	Reziac on Deer Lodge’s Hillcrest…

Montana's Historic Landscapes

35 Years in the Big Sky Country

Monthly Archives: December 2014